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Exciting Research

Medical research – real research, not empty analysis of case studies – is exciting. I love seeing the progress that is made as scientists learn more about what causes diseases. Or sometimes they haven’t yet found a cause, but they’re finding clues.

A studyin the New England Journal of Medicine (Sep 9), looks at myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). …

…the jist of the article is, “OK, we can treat MDS with a drug that kills all the bad cells to the point where they are in remission and we can’t find any of those cells. How come some of these patients have a recurrence?”

The simplistic answer is that the researchers found that stem cells which have a chromosomal abnormality that puts them at risk of producing ineffective MDS cells still exist in the body…

I know this is about cancer, not RA, but there are so many discoveries in the treatment of cancer that then get applied to autoimmune diseases (methotrexate can be used as a chemo drug!) that I find the potential here exciting. Maybe, just maybe, this will eventually combine with autoimmune research and lead to a cure.